For years I have heard people talk about achieving flow state. Also, often talked about in terms of “being in the zone” or achieving almost super power like attributes.

To be honest, the concept has always seemed foreign to me, or I never quite grasped the concept, as I’m not sure I could ever say I ever achieved what people talked about.

That is until recently. Something clicked.

Let me first start by saying I’m no stranger to trying things to tame my active brain, reduce my anxiety, and to “fight” my depression which I’ve dealt with since a young age.

I continue to incorporate all of the following:

• Therapy (at least once a week)
• Running / Exercise (sporadic)
• Meditation (often)
• Self imposed long periods alone (often)
• Eating better / Eating worse ?

The truth is until recently all of these things have felt transactional to me.

Someone says “you should do this” and then, I do that. The issue I have often felt, is these prescriptions were often what people felt worked for them, or they were regurgitating something they heard, or something that worked for someone else.

So what’s different this time? I got sick.

About five months ago, I just felt really bad. I had a cough that was uncontrollable (COVID was ruled out), and it led to a bruised/cracked rib. Every cough, every laugh, every move resulted in extreme pain. I would take pain killers and nothing worked. I often would be up at all hours of the night often crying wishing the pain would go away.

This pain went on for months. Doctors tried antibiotics and that partially helped but not completely. And that’s when I sat down and inventoried what is going on in my life and tried to identify what this sickness and pain was trying to tell me. And instead of just chalking it up as, I’m sick, I asked out loud “what is the message?”

I thought long and hard on this and reviewed my last five years.

• Helped a food company navigate through some challenging times as their interim Chief Operating Officer
• Spun out a company and raised capital and helped build that company
• Got a divorce and became a single dad (intentionally a move I know I needed to make)
• Navigated the company through a pandemic the best I could
• Fought the fight for democracy and to help Georgia senators and Joe Biden get elected — in the process started to re-evaluate my “highest and best use.

So what was my conclusion and what does this have to do with flow? Well, quite simply I was way out of flow. There is that word again. So what does it mean?

For me it now means the optimal state your body, mind and soul want to operate in but life and society systematically take you out of your own optimal state of being. It happens because society whether through your childhood, religion, education, work, media, government, family units are defining daily what your life is “supposed” to look like. You are supposed to believe something, you are supposed to eat something, you are supposed to believe in something. What I am learning is all of these things are constructs and they exist for various reasons (I can go into this at a later time).

By my listening to my body for perhaps the first time ever, I realized my body was rejecting what the systems were saying I should be doing. I was not in flow with my own body and soul but a product of the systems around me.

So through intense listening to my body, my mind and my soul I have started to feel how words, actions, people, air, things impact my very essence. And where I feel “friction” or “conflict” I am starting to go deeper on those things. In another post I will go into some of the things I am doing to honor the messages I am now getting from my own self. Some things I am still working through but my sense of flow has definitely started to feel more at ease with less friction/conflict. I have a long way to go.

So, as you live your day.

Feel what feels good. What doesn’t? What hurts? What feels good? Listen to your thoughts. What makes you smile? What makes you anxious or mad? Write it all down and observe. More on this in future writings.

I look forward to continuing this journey together.